AoS 3.0 Battletome Wishlisting/Theorycraft

Was having some fun with homebrew / houserules, and decided to take a crack at my "dream" 3.0 battletome for our inevitable update

Would love to see others thoughts! (dont mind the formatting, the tool I used is a bit buggy)

https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-NFuVhbaVuhK9zw7T1oy


Big changes [my opinion on likelyhood]:

- Simplified Allegiance abilities and summoning [7/10 Very likely]
- Our own prayer list [9/10, fixes skink priest and gives a nice thematic list of options]
- Saurus to 2 Wounds [5/10, only way I see to make them distinct from skinks and feel lore accurate]
- Remove Starpriest [3/10, the model was originally a skink priest, and buff stacking has been the big balancing issue of our current book, but GW rarely removes Warscrolls]
- Bring Kroq-gar and Nakai back [.01/10 for Kroq-gar, 2/10 for Nakai because of Total War]
- More mount traits [9.9/10, GW might GW]
- More subfactions [5/10, depends if we are the Sylvaneth/StD book or the Skaven/Ogor book in the pair]

 

Thanks for creating this thread, I've been thinking quite a bit about that lately. I've been reading comments on this forum for ages and finally decided to join in on the fun.

First off, that's a lot of work, and congratulations it looks good. now I'm not good at figuring out how strong a book just from the text. Did you already try out those rules in a test game?

I really like a lot of things you did in the book, most notably:

- Making the saurus side of the book more elite
- Splitting up the skink priest (not a prayer) into multiple abilities instead of it being on single ultra-buff
- Making the knights faster than the skinks. (Always bugged me that the raptors were slower than skinks)
- Having an option to get Kroxigor as battleline
- Making the carnosaur more scary
- Changing the scaly skin rule to make it consistent against every opponent.


I could go on with the things I like and I should really try those rules out to get a feel for them and if the book is too strong.


Some things that I would personally change are:

- Having a fixed number of attacks on the razordon's missile weapon

- I think comet's call needs to be reworked (I believe as it is now it is unfun to play against, especially in smaller point games). Maybe something like casting value 7. Pick a point on the battlefield, all units within D3 inches take D3 dame on a 2+ and if you cast on a 10+, it's all enemy units within D6 inches.

- For the chameleon skinks perfect mimicry, I've always thought the rule should be: enemy units cannot target this unit with missile weapons while they are outside of 12" or if they are outside of 3" and the chameleon skink unit is wholly within 1" of a terrain piece. Basically, the skinks are invisible to the enemy ^^

An idea I've had, but it would probably require a complete rewrite of the book is spawnings.
So, I like the idea of seraphon having okay warscrolls and becoming good with synergies.
At the moment in my mind spawnings would be an allegiance ability a bit like this:

Spawning: Every time you add a hero to your Seraphon army, you can choose from which spawning this hero is from. This grants the hero a trait. In addition, this hero can be associated with a Seraphon unit in your army. If you do so, that unit is from the same spawning as the hero and will share the trait while it is wholly within 12" of the hero. You may not pick the same spawning more than once in your army.

And then there should be a number of possible spawnings (generic ones, saurus ones, skink ones). a couple of examples (I don't have names yet):

- Generic 1: This unit has a bravery characteristic of 10. In addition, it does not take battle shock tests. (I agree, pretty useless for the hero in starborne )
- Slann 1: When this unit is targeted by a spell, you can choose to roll a dice, on a 4+, the effects of the spell are ignored.
- Saurus 1: Add 1 to the attack’s characteristic of this unit's melee weapon.
- Skink 1: When this unit attacks, unmodified hit rolls of 6 score a mortal wound and the attack sequence ends.

The idea is to add diversity and possibilities. You want a slann bunkered by unbreakable guard, here you go.

Other than that, for the battletome my top wishes are:
- Mount traits
- Prayers
- More subfactions
- Better saurus and more importantly, the possibility of playing 100% saurus lists without feeling like I'm missing on too much utility

 

I'd hope for the following.

1. Actually decide what playstyle Seraphon are supposed too have. Starborne & Coalesced are too different, and as long as they keep trying to halfass both large chunks of our faction will continue to be underwhelming. GW should just commit to one playstyle already.
2. Finally getting a prayer list
3. Updated spell lores so we have more than 2 or 3 decent spells
4. Mount traits, artifacts, etc. with more than 1 or 2 decent choices. Possibly give some to archetypes, like you can see in other battletomes (e.g. give us specific PRIEST traits, or artifacts that require the hero to have BANNER)
   
5. An update to saurus guard so they can be an actual unit in their own right, instead of just a Slann-upgrade sprue.
6. A bigger distinction between Saurus & Skink units, especially those that compete for the same niche (e.g. rippers, terradons & knights all compete for more or less the same niche)
7. An update for our behemoths so they can catch up with all of the powercreep.
8. An update to our skink heroes so they are at least vaguely capable as independent units. They don't need to be good, but in it's current state a skink priest struggles with killing even a single clanrat per turn, which is just kind of absurd.
   
   1. In addition to this; it'd be nice if the point cost for OP combo's didn't fall so disproportionally on support units. But that's more of a fundamental issue with how GW determines point costs.
9. An update to Slann to make it a more engaging unit, and encourage it to do things other than bunkering down in a corner surrounded by guard.
10. More syngergy between Skinks/Saurus/Kroxigor to encourage mixed armies. This would help prevent one race from dominating the lists.
11. Updates for the minor saurus heroes to be usefull for well, anything really.
    
12. Various updates & fixes here and there. E.g. Kroak's weird combat profile making him hilariously bad in a fight against 1 clanrat, Razordons need more reliable number of attacks, kroxigor need love, Ark of sotek needs some love, the issues with the coalesced allegiance traits etc.
    
13. Some named characters (and in general, some interesting lore)

Realisticly speaking though, I doubt we'll get anything particularly significant. We perform too well in tournaments, so there's not going to be any push from that audience to change things. On top of that, a lot of chances that would fix some of the current issues are going to be percieved as buffs, and are thus going to encounter resistance from that same crowd as Seraphon already perform so well, even if the buff is negligible in practise (E.g. fixing Kroaks' combat is a straight up buff, it's extremely minor, but it's still a buff) or accompanied by nerfs. Additionally, while the current playstyle has issues, a lot of those issues are only problematic for certain types of players.

For example, the discussion about Saurus & our behemoths being underwhelming is mostly pushed by lore and fluff focused, with competitive players pushing back that they're fine cuz some guy won a tournament with them last week so clearly it's fine. Similarly, the issues with our skink heroes being absolutly terrible units is fine as far as competitive players are (generally) concerned, because their support is absolutly amazing in the right combo so its still "worth" it's points to them.

And lastly, GW simply doesn't seem to know what to do with the seraphon. Both lore & gameplay wise. And untill that changes I doubt anything we'll see a whole lot of improvement.

 

1. God I hope not, this was the best decision theyve made from a design perspective in a long time. A lot of long time Lizardmen players such as myself *hated* the Seraphon direction in early AoS, it was such a massive departure from how the army traditionally player. However, it was that army for 5 years, you cant just go back to no teleports or summoning without pissing off a lot of new players. The Starborne Coalesced split makes both camps of players able to have the army they signed up for.
2-4. I agree, I hope you like how I took them
5. I actually think they are fine how they are. Thats their traditional role. Maybe a bit more into the "elite unit" role, but youd have to pay more points for that and then they are worse bodyguards.
6. I really think this is solved by moving saurus to 2 wounds (3 on knights), so they are slower but tankier. They are too close in durability atm.
7. Agreed, in my doc there were a lot of little buffs to most behemoths (Except the Solar Engine and EotG)
8. Thats.... most support heroes and wizards in anything not named stormcast or orruks. Look at a battlemage, necromancer, or madcap shaman sometime
1. Yea they kind of have to do that. If they added 50 points to a Solar Engine just because of the way it combos with a skink priest, it becomes never worth taking without the priest. At least if the points are on the priest the "buff target" can be okay on its own
9. Not really sure what they could do here
10. Honestly if so many buffs werent locked to the SKINK keyword this would be fine as it is.
11-13. Agreed

This is why I want them to remove the Starpriest. Limit the ability to buff stack and you have both a massive nerf and more design space without worrying about how a unit preforms when supercharged

Our skink heroes are definitely not terrible, only the skink chief on Flying mount is at the moment

 

O, it's definitly going to piss people off. However, half-assing two very different playstyles just doesn't work particularly well.
For example, we're never going to see elite saurus as long as Starborne exists and can summon them. And similarly, razordons & salamanders will always be on the expensive side for coalesced as long as Starborne can teleport them to nuke things into the ground.

I'm fine with them being bodyguards, I simply wish they weren't just a glorified slann upgrade.
A simple fix would be to just allow them to guard all heroes. At least then they have a purpose beyond standing next to the Slann.

It'd probably also require an update in terms of damage. But like I said earlier, not going to happen as long as both Starborn & Coalesced have to exist together.

Yes, it's a more general issue. Though the skinks do seem to be one of the worst examples. Especially Skink priests.
The skink heroes basicly have three issues.
1) Their actual stats are garbage.
2) Their support ability is only usefull on valuable allied targets (e.g. there's basicly no point in putting herald of the old ones, or serpentstaff on a unit of 10 skinks)
3) 90% of their powerbudget is stuck in their support abilities.

The stats being garbage holds for most support heroes like Necromancers and battlemages. However, usually either point 2 or 3 doesn't hold. E.g. a battlemage has acces to decent offensive spells, not just support abiltiies. And a necromancer's Invigorating aura is still usefull on "weak" targets. This allows the other support heroes to still do something usefull when the combo is starting to fall apart. A skink priest can't really do anything once the solar engine he was buffing is dead, a necromancer can at least go heal something else.

And now you have the reverse situation where the support unit isn't worth taking outside of the optimal combo. Which isn't really a better situation.
More generally speaking though, I think that the difference between a baseline unit, and a fully buffed unit should simply be kept within certain bounds so this issue doesn't arise.

Removing their infinite range would probably help making them more interesting.
But yeah, as it stands they've kind of painted themselves into a corner. I had hoped that Kroak would've been a dual kit, similar to say the lord of change/kairos, so the slann could be turned into a semi-effective monster (or at least, something that can defend itself) but that oppertunity has passed.

Yup, that's one of the core issues we have. It's also one of the underlying issues with the skink heroes being so terrible as independent units.

Yes and no.
Competitivly speaking, they are fine (aside from the skink chief), as the whole buff-stacking nonsense gives them a niche that works and allows them to win games.
However, they are utterly terrible as an independent unit due to having their full powerbudget poured into support abilities which only work on valuable targets. Like I mentioned a bit earlier.

Basicly they have the same issue guard have; they're not worth anything on their own, but do synergize well with another unit. However, since that synergy is all they have going for them, they have become little more than a glorified upgrade for that other, more important, unit.

 

Honestly it just sounds like you don't like the army design of Seraphon. Personally if they removed the buff-stacking playstyle or reduced it to be comparable to other armies, I wouldn't really want to play Seraphon anymore. That is the Seraphon niche among the armies, we use our superior support characters to allow our units to punch above their weight. Without that we are just Cities with Dinosaurs, one of a long list of mixed-arms armies in the game.

I dont really understand this. A skink priest has 3 support abilities, two of which work on any SKINK keyworded unit (and notice I did say above that those should be SERAPHON keyed instead of limited to just skink). Similarly, the Necromancer's main reason for existing only works on Summonable units, it can't heal or Danse Macabre Blood Knights or Heroes.

Why are you bringing a skink priest at all if your only decent skink unit is a Solar Engine? No Engine of the Gods / Salamanders / 30 skinks / Skink Chief on Steg / 2nd Bastilodon? Then yea in the case of there is only one unit in your army he can buff, sure he isn't worth it. In most tourny lists there are 3-4 of those units, he always has something he can buff. And even if they all die and he hasn't somehow, he still is a priest with Bless/Heal.

 

I love that we have 2 very different playstyles available to us with starboard and coalesced. It just opens so much variety in Lists you can play. The only thing I don't like is that your are basicly forced to take a slaan as the general in starborn to get an allegiance ability.

 

Buff-stacking is fine as a mechanic, though it's a playstyle that's difficult to get right due to the many pitfalls.
In the case of skink footheroes those suffer from having become glorified upgrades for other units, and are no longer worthwhile as individual units.

Meh, there's 24+ factions by now. There's bound to be some overlap design-wise.

Making them seraphon keyed wouldn't change a whole lot as the root of the problem is the type of buffs the skinks give.
A necromancer's heal still has a tangible effect even if the only viable target is 1 single zombie. And it's effect will always be the same, namely ressurecting 3 zombies. Consequently, it doesn't matter if you use it to heal a massive unit, or to try and keep bring a decimated unit back from the dead. The effect is the same, and in both cases it's tangible. So this ability is always usefull as long as there is a valid target.

In contrast, Danse Macabre isn't valuable to cast on a 1 single zombie. It has no tangible effect as 1 zombie attacking will probably fail to hit. So this ability is only really usefull if there is a valuable target.

So the Necromancer has 2 types of support abilities. 1 Ability that is always usefull as long as there is at least 1 valid target, and 1 that's only usefull if there is 1 valuable target.
This allows the necromancer to be usefull in nearly all situations, because there will nearly always be a valid target nearby, even if the valuable targets have been killed (and/or are on the other side of the battlefield)

In contrast, the skink priest's support abilities are only usefull on valuable targets. Causing the skink priest to get stuck in situations where there are plenty of valid targets, including himself, but none of them are worth casting on because none of them are valuable.

If you'd want to solve this problem then skinks need to get a support ability that does something of significance, even if it's cast on weak units like some left-over skinks. Or a very simple alternative, make it worthwhile to cast it on himself as a last resort.

Those 3-4 valuable units aren't all just going to be standing around your priest. It's entirely possible for the surviving bastiladon to be on the other side of the battlefield or something.

Having to rely on generic abilities to actually guarantee a unit is usefull throughout the game isn't great design.

Going back to the necromancer; they also still have arcane bolt, mystic shield, and whatever lore spell they picked to use if they start to run out of summonable targets. But as I pointed out, they are usefull even with just with the stuff on their warscroll.

 

Heaps of good thoughts in this thread. I'd maybe like to see some consolidation of abilities so that we aren't cursed with such a gigantic hero phase. I'm actually fine with it from a player perspective, but my regular opponents often point out that there's so many different buffs going off that it's impossible to keep track of what's happening on a case-by-case basis.

Besides that, the pattern that has emerged in 3.0 tomes is that subfaction allegiance abilities have been significantly dialled back, although faction-locked traits and artifacts have disappeared. This is a good thing for us as many of them are sub-par, so hopefully the good ones stick around as generic ones to be chosen as we please, among the other existing ones which we know and love (Cloak of Feathers, Incandescent Rectrices etc). As for the subfaction abilities themselves, I'm interested to see what happens with Thunder Lizard in particular - I somehow doubt we'll keep both the Basti double-tap as well as the additional wounds on monsters.

I also want to see new mount traits for each type of mounted hero. 1 Starborne and 1 Coalesced trait was pretty lackluster. Having more options would spice up listbuilding. Also, Mawtribes got some cool monstrous actions for the Stonehorns and Thundertusks. Can we get the same? Here's some ideas:

• Bloodroar - Carnosaur only. On a 3+, the targeted unit cannot receive the Inspiring Presence ability in the following battleshock phase.
• Unstoppable Stampede - Stegadon only. On a 2+, the targeted unit suffers D3 mortal wound, or D6 if it has a wounds characteristic of 1-2. In addition, the Stegadon can make a 3" pile-in move after this action.
• Living Fortress - Bastiladon only. Subtract 1 from wound rolls targeting this unit during the following combat phase, but you must subtract 1 from hit rolls for attacks made with this unit.

Then there's a swathe of quality of life changes needed to improve internal balance so we actually see the other half of our tome see some play:

• Ripperdactyls - Price them up and turn them into lethally effective glass cannons. You should be throwing buckets and buckets of dice to absolute shred low-save units with these guys. More attacks and a point of rend would go a long way.
• Terradons - Basically useless after they've dropped their bombs, except as objective grabbers. Not really sure where to take these guys but they need some love.
• Salamanders - These can probably stay the same provided we get some other high-rend options so that we're not forced to lean on them as a crutch.
• Razordons - Need some kind of reliability to their attacks. Turn their overwatch ability into a bonus to Unleash Hell instead.
• Kroxigors - These lads should be our answer to Kurnoth Hunters and Ogroid Theridons. They need more rend and maybe even more damage. Make them a conditional battleline option too. Keep the bonus against hordes but as a general rule rather than locked to a Moon Hammer so that the weapon isn't useless when fighting single-entity units.
• Troglodons - I know a lot of people are happy with this guy's current role but I feel he shouldn't be such a slouch in combat. Make his spit deal MW and give him some rend. As it is he packs less heat than standard foot heroes found in many factions.
• Stegadons - These guys are fine. Could potentially use a pip of extra rend on the horns as he has the tendency to bounce off high saves (which shouldn't be the case for a rampaging triceratops).
• Bastiladons - Perfect right where they are. Their melee profile is bizzarely bad for a big dino with a club for a tail but it's hard to justify improving it seeing as that's not really his role.
• Skinks - These guys are divisive. On one hand they are genuinely useless without buffs. But, they become one of the most feared units in the game when fully loaded. I would be happy for these guys to remain more or less unchanged, provided we can still juice them up. Others might not agree. At the very least, we need an incentive to take Javelins over Boltspitters. Perhaps a better hit roll, or a pip of rend? Moonstone Clubs could also use some love to give melee-oriented Skinks a niche.
• Chameleons - Make them invisible while in cover. Job done.
• Saurus Warriors - These guys need the treatment that Chaos Warriors got in the latest Slaves to Darkness tome. Two attacks base, with better hit rolls and extra, conditional attacks based on the kind of unit they're fighting or something.
• Saurus Knights - 10" move. Add rend to their weapons with more rend on lances when they charge.
• Saurus Guard - 3+ save, 3 attacks base. Take me back to the days of that AoS1 battalion where these guys were completely immovable.
• Oldblood - Should be the lynchpin of any Saurus-focused army. Turn his +1 to Hit command into a free aura so that it's not butting heads with All Out Attack. On foot, he should be a more capable fighter than he is currently. On a Carnosaur he should be the biggest melee threat in the army. Big rend, big damage, 3+ save. Make the Gauntlet actually do something as well.
• Scar Vet - Basically the same as above, except to be taken as more of a standalone fighter than a dual-purpose support piece / beatstick. Otherwise, limit his support buffs to Knights to make him the leader of your flanking units. There needs to be more differentiation between him and Scar-Vet because they don't currently have an individual identity.
• Sunblood - Tap into the essence of his spiritual predecessor, Gor-Rok. Make him a compact one-man wrecking ball that your opponent has to commit to killing before he causes problems. Make that big shield do something cool (...2+ save?) and crank up his attacks.
• Starpriest - He's fine. keep him the same.
• Starseer - He's fine too.
  
• Priest - Get rid of Starstone Staff, and put it in a Seraphon prayer lore along with some other options. If I had to guess, Herald of the Old Ones will not be sticking around and this guy will just be a one-and-done priest rather than the big ol' bucket o' buffs that he currently is. I'm fine with that.
• Slann - Comet's Call needs to be changed so it's not so much of a negative player experience (not sure how). Drop his command ability and give him a spell option that gives the same benefit against shooting attacks but in a radius around him. There is a lack of decent support spells in the Slann lore.
• Kroak - For the love of god, change the rule that determines when he dies. My 450pt investment shouldn't even have a chance to peace out after taking 2 wounds in chip damage from the Sentinels on the other side of the table (who also shot through his compulsory 10-man guard contingent). I would much rather he just had a decent wound pool and a good ward save like the older book.

 

Same here! I like the flexibility available to our army. I would play dinos and toad wizards all day regardless, but I dove in hand and foot because I have so many tournament viable ways to play (I like to shake it up). We aren't alone in this either.

On top of that, we have been staying relatively high in the meta despite having to hop from starborn to coalesced to starborn to stay in the tippy top of our internal meta.

Take away that dichotomy and you take something away that, to my experience, most of our community appreciates.

I also appreciate how coy we have to play with the moving parts of our army. Sometime you have to sacrifice your queen to rip the win from under your opponents feet. Makes it just that much more satisfactory.

 

Put the roar of ruin back to being the half leadership
Give me back the Totem keyword
For 150 more points let me have a howdah with skinks having blowpipes on em
Is a 3+ to hit the bite on me too much to ask for?
A fucking 5+ shrug. I'm a 35 wound Behemoth with the biggest base in the game

 

I would love a howdah on the saurian. Just aesthetically if nothing else...to the kitbash lab!!!

 

Given that we have 28-ish units, and seem to be getting a few more (there seems to be actual new stuff, and not just replacements of old sculpts).
Yeah, probably asking too much

Imho I'd just hope for the following:

1. An actual split between starborne & coalesced (or better yet, finally commit to one concept....) so the (sub)faction can actually be balanced around a solid base core. Instead of this constant struggle where something gets nerfed because it's too good in starborne, but the nerf makes it horrible in coalesced (or vice versa).
   
2. Decent spell lores/prayers/mount traits/artifacts/etc. with some actual choices as opposed to only 1, maybe 2, viable artifact/spell/mount trait/etc..
3. Less focus on buff-stacking so we don't see such extreme differences between a properly min-maxed and a poorly build list.
4. Our various units, especially foot heroes and msu battleline, to be vaguely capable independently. This would also go a long way towards making the less powerfull units vaguely competitive, at the very least they'd maybe find a place as support troops to round out your list.
5. Various fixes to certain mechanics that just aren't designed very well (e.g. Fix Kroak's melee profile so he's actually capable of killing a clan-rat in a one-on-one duel, seriously, who thought that only having a special attack like that makes for a well designed unit?)

And honestly, getting even half of that is terribly optimistic. Given how little the second tome truly fixed, I'd say realistic expectations should be low.

With how balance is currently going I don't think you have much of a choice. It's either that, or a billion mortal wounds

 

I do wish much of this too! Not necessarily expecting competitive balance across the board, but niche meaningful choices between what everything can do. I don't think our flyers are great right now, but I do think that they both offer distinct flavourful quasi-viable roles even now, they are just a bit low on the damage front for the current meta.

I think no -2 rend is not really viable with the current game state as a whole. And I honestly would like to see it on a few more of select weapon profiles, carnosaur jaws for that matter. Really, I would like to see -2 rend considered for high damage low volume attacks. If buff stacking for us continues (and I hope it does to a reduced extent) they would have to be careful with what they do or don't toss it on so it doesn't accidentally end up on a model that can sneak in 3 extra attacks on a weapon profile that was balance for 1 extra max.

I don't know how much I care about Kroaks melee combat ability, but I agree that it is silly how quickly it scales down. I kinda hope they keep it as is since he is an old old man after all

 

This is what bothers me the most it. It isnt like he needs to be turned into a meleepowerhouse or something. Balancewise it barely matters. Its just really Silly to put such a special weapon profile on someone and not include an alternative weapon or decent mininum attack volume to guarantee the expensive centerpiece model has some baseline combat potential and doesn't get stuck when confronted with 1 clanrat or something equally minor.

As long as buff stacking remains the focus of the playstyle this will continue to be an issue. It is simply an inherent design issue that is extremely difficult to get right. Especially if you want to provide some flexibility with how you stack buffs.

 

I do like having it (buff stacking) in our army. I don't want to only be ably to play dino stomp. And buff stacking isn't exclusive to Seraphon in the current meta. I think there is room for a buff based army army design in AoS. More care needs to be put into it than has previously. Kroxigors I feel are a good example of how-to as a concept regardless of their playability going into the next season. They are buffed by being near skink units, if most of our buffs are inherent to the specific model like that, and limit our other ways to dish out buffs.

I understand your want (reason) for a simpler style of gameplay, but while I think there is a very good conversation to be had on buffing the base warscroll of saurus units in general and making them able to stand on their own and drop buff stacking from the keyword entirely, that just doesn't track with what skinks are. They are mystics and hunters that are small and weak comparatively to the rest of the army, and it makes sense to set game mechanics that forces them to work together to reflect the Great Plan of the Old Ones. My take on them has always been that they are greater than the sum of their parts because of this.

But yes, less flexibility on how buffs can be dished out should, and needs to happen. Also Skink priest has tooo much lol

 

The issue is that right now the individual parts are garbage, while the sum of its parts is absurdly powerfull.

For a well designed faction the individual parts need to be able to stand on their own as well.

E.g. a msu of Skinks shouldn't be completely harmless. A skink priest with no nearby allies should be able to defend himself from foes etc.

And right now most of our faction is simply incapable of doing much of anything independently.